Caudatum
Caudatum means “tailed” in Latin. In biology, it’s used in some scientific names, most famously Paramecium caudatum, a single-celled freshwater organism.
Paramecium caudatum is a ciliate, a tiny creature covered with hairlike structures called cilia that help it swim and collect food. It has a slipper‑shaped body and lives in ponds and slow-moving streams, where it eats bacteria and other small organisms. It is about 0.1–0.3 millimeters long.
It mainly reproduces by dividing into two new cells (binary fission), but it can also exchange genetic material with another Paramecium in a process called conjugation, which mixes genes.
Paramecium caudatum is a common teaching organism because its large cell is easy to observe under a light microscope, making it useful for learning about cell structure, movement, feeding, and basic genetics.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 13:12 (CET).